Road to Kill
by Micah Debrink
Summary: A large pride of shinx, luxio, and luxray live a nomadic existence in the large arid grasslands just north of Castelia City. What could be better…until the humans construct a road across their habitat. Contains mild violence and character death.


(Hey guys. Recently, I've been trying to work on my pokémon POV fics. Here is a short story that I have created with that in mind. Hope you enjoy. Pokemon and its trademarked items do not belong to me.)

* * *

The horizon is a thin strip of darkness.

Even in the night, its black color shines across the moonlit grassy plains that our pride of shinx, luxio, and luxray call home. We did not take it as a portent when the humans built the road across our land. We do not have time for such trivial fears.

While we are naturally diurnal, a third of us sleep at dusk and wake at midnight. Food is a constant scarcity. Our pride of over 100 pokémon is quite large, but much of our population are young shinx, and incapable of hunting. Nocturnal pokémon are a risky prey to pursue and kill, but a necessity to fulfill our high food supply needs.

The first item of business after waking is a general assembly, where the eldest luxray, the leaders of our pride, organize the hunt. Only the bravest of us are chosen to hunt at night. It is an honor—and if not, a task fraught with danger.

"Now, listen close," the elders begin. "Here is the plan. There is a brisk wind tonight. There may not be many ratata, but in the valleys and small depressions you may be able to get a few small oddish hiding themselves in the greenery. If we start along that path up the hill…"—one of the elders pointed—"…you should be able to score a decent kill. Towards the stream, near the road—"

"Excuse me, respected ones, I have a question," one of us interjects.

"Yes, what is it?"

"About the road, respected ones. I saw some houndour around the rocky hills on the other side of the road."

Voices erupt among us. Such a large kill would be unprecedented.

"Silence!" The elders shout. "Now you know the rules. No one crosses that road, is that clear?"

No one makes a sound. Our hungry stomachs are tough competition against the elders' authority.

"Now, go. All of you. Stay safe. We don't want anyone in our pride to be killed by the road."

* * *

In spite of the warning, some of us younger luxio are still desperate to find the prized meat of the houndour. Like a bunch of fools, we venture along the grassy plain towards the dark strip of road. Packs of houndour were once plentiful on our side of the road, but since we began nocturnal hunting their numbers have dwindled.

As the youngest adults of our pride, we are the most physically capable: we are the most agile, our vision is very acute, and our electric attacks are powerful enough to stun the strongest predator.

Thick tufts of grass, laced with thorns and long creeping roots, brush alongside us as we leap across the fields. When the blades of grass scratch our legs, turning our blue fur red, we merely go faster, and the cuts sting less. When a thick root threatens to trip us, we merely go faster. As our breathing becomes shorter, our muscles more fatigued, our vision starts to narrow into a tunnel in front of us. We see the moon. The star-lit sky. The black horizon. The grassy plain.

And in the emptiness, we sometimes wonder whether we are running towards something…or running away. The younger ones of the pride tend to imagine the latter.

Suddenly, we stop just before the road. There is a steep gravel embankment that rises above the grass to the road surface. One of us makes the slippery climb up.

"I see one! There he is!"

The rest of us rush up to the top and notice a lone houndour on the other side of the road, inadvertently approaching us. It is a decent-sized adult male; just one of these creatures would be enough to feed ten of our pride. We back up along the gravel embankment, letting the blind hill conceal our presence.

The houndour, unaware of our presence, approaches the road. Half of us carefully cross the road and hide under the gravel embankment on the other side. We plan to circle him in.

The houndour soon arrives at the surface of the road. Although the night is cold, our blood runs hot. One of us lights a small spark, visible in the dark—the signal.

One side pounces on him first. When our prey turns around, the other side reveals themselves. Before he can react, we surround him at all sides: on both sides of the road, and both directions of the road. Our looks are fierce, putting the houndour's infamously frightening growl to shame.

We charge our bodies, bright sparks surrounding our fur. The houndour dares not move. In one burst, we simultaneously release an intense bolt of electricity on our prey. The houndour is stunned to death within a fraction of second.

When the sparks fade and it is all dark again, we see the fallen body of the houndour lying on the smooth center of the road. The houndour is heavy—it takes at least five of us to drag him slowly away from the road.

We were not sure what exactly conspired after. Some of us heard one of our fellow luxio saying:

"Hey, who invited a luxray to our hunt? I can see their x-ray vision."

The next moment, we hastily yank each other off of the road while the human-made metal boxes with lights at the front zooms past. We slip and roll down the embankment, the pebbles of gravel cutting deep into our flesh.

In the night, these metal boxes have lights on them, which look very much like a luxray using x-ray vision (during which their eyes light up). While none of us are hurt, we find that the corpse of the houndour, which we hastily abandoned, was mutilated by the metal box running over it. The mushy flesh makes it impossible to transport it back to our pride.

Like a bunch of greedy fools, we all eat as much of our kill as our stomachs can hold. Blood rims our mouths and splatters onto our bodies as we sink our teeth into the houndour's flesh. Yet we leave over half of the meat behind.

Our stomachs, formerly empty, are now a heavy burden. We trudge across the endless grassy plains. Walking slowly, we feel the blades of grass cut on our legs, the injuries stinging like a swarm of beedrill. We occasionally trip over a root or some loose pebbles.

We each carry one of our fellow luxio on our backs, and every 50 paces we switch places and they carry us. By the time we return to our pride, it is already well after dawn. A group of young shinx tug at our long, blood-soaked fur, and they each ask us:

"Did you bring any food for me? I'm hungry. I'm hungry. Can I have some food, please?"

And although our stomachs are full, a certain emptiness reigns within us. It is cold. None of us get very much sleep the following night.

* * *

The dark horizon has brought humans to our land. They take their moving metal boxes along the road, and they sometimes stop by to watch us, standing above the gravel embankment, looking down at the vast plains.

"See them roam," they usually say. "See how free they are."

Hearing this, one lone shinx exclaims to our pride: "I wanna cross the road! I wanna cross the road!" He is so young that his voice is still high, but this only makes his call more resounding among our pride. The foolish shinx manages it across the plain, to the road, then across it.

When he returns, he tells us of plentiful kill and lush vegetation on the other side of the road. Suddenly, we began to take notice. Murmurs erupt among the fellow male luxio, the mother luxio, and the elder luxray.

"Come see for yourself," the brave shinx says. "Come with me to cross the road."

"What are you, a fool?" We glare at him. The mothers cry nervously. The elders do not visibly react.

The brave young shinx leads our pride to the road. We stop at the top of the gravel embankment. The young male luxio stand at the front, their paws moving rebelliously onto the black top of the road…then retreating. The elders stand close behind, watching carefully. The mothers cannot bear to watch and stand at the bottom of the gravel embankment.

The shinx stands in the middle of the road, his tiny legs not even trembling the slightest. "Here, I'll show you! It's really easy—"

Before the brave young shinx can finish crossing the road, a cursed human runs him over with a moving metal box.

Our pride scrambles away from the road in utter fright, when some of us notice another group of humans, in their moving metal box, stopped alongside the road. They watch us from the road, gazing in awe.

"Aren't they so amazing? Look at all them, running across the plain, so free. If only we could be like they are."

* * *

"Get some sleep," the elders implore to us at dusk. "The hunt starts at midnight tonight."

"Of course, respected ones."

It is a promise we cannot fulfill. But we imagine, under the safety of our shut eyelids, the last seconds of the brave young shinx's life. We had also been to the road. We had seen the opportunities and hopes that lay beyond it.

No doubt the shinx felt the same way we did. Perhaps there was a gleam in his eyes as he crossed. Eyes focused forward, at the fresh, abundant fields ahead. Life abounding before his very eyes.

Then carnage. Flesh exposed. Fur torn and mottled. Eyes ripped from the body—indefinitely paralyzed with terror.

* * *

Also ingrained in our minds are the words said over his body.

After the unfortunate death, another shinx, a friend of the deceased, immediately ran up to the body sitting precariously in the middle of the road. Standing at the edge of the road, we trembled as the young shinx fell for the bait. We watched vigilantly for incoming metal boxes.

The living shinx did not cry. He stared at his friend's mutilated body, and said:

"Why are your eyes open? Close your eyes. Sleep. Sleep."

None of us can sleep that night.

* * *

A grim look emerges among the elders at the next midnight meeting. "Populations of kill are dwindling in this area," the elders grumble. "Tonight is the last night we stay here. At dawn, we will move. Go now, find as much food as you can."

We are lucky in finding one piece of kill, to share among our group: a small ratata. It is a quick kill—one zap and it is stunned to death, without even a trickle of blood. We carry it back to our pride, where it is collected along with the rest of the kill that night. We eat the shreds of assorted meat allotted equally among us.

"Excuse me," a young shinx tugs at our bloodless fur. "I didn't get any meat. They forgot to give me my allotment."

"Did the mothers not give you some of their allotment?"

"No. They're mad at me because I went out into the plains myself. They said I have to be punished."

"What have you been eating then?"

"Grass…sometimes I accidentally bite into an oddish," he says with a smile. We can hear his tiny stomach growling.

We give the shinx half of our food allotment. At dawn, we manage a few quick moments of sleep, before we are woken to prepare for the move. It is a warm spring day; wherever we are going, the fields would be lush and abound with fresh kill.

Nevertheless, we take care to not let our mouths trickle with saliva—water is also scarce.

The elders lead us across the road carefully, in groups of 10 or 20. It takes much of the day to get the entire pride across safely; we walk no further than 100 more paces before it is dusk again. We settle for the night. The road is close to us: a thick black strip in the bluish moonlit night.

Eventually after several days of travel, we settle at the base of a small rocky hill. It is much better than where we last were: the hill provides shelter from the northerly winds, as well as shade during warmer days.

But in the vast expanse of grasslands around us, we can still see the road: a thin line of darkness across the horizon. It surprises us how similar it looks from the other side. To the youngest shinx, it seems like we hadn't moved at all.

* * *

Months later, when the body of the young shinx is no more than a memory of a body, the weather turns cold again. The nights became longer, and the dark horizon becomes evermore dark.

At our midnight meeting, one of us—a young shinx who had recently evolved into a strong, fit luxio—tells the elders:

"About the road, respected one. I saw some houndoom on the other side."

And like a bunch of fools, we head towards the road again.

* * *

(END)

* * *

(Thank you for reading. Your comments/questions/criticism are appreciated.)


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